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Sat, 25 May 2019 13:36:26 +0000Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Managementen-usThree cheers for beer! A celebration of National Beer Dayhttps://www.themaineedge.com/news/cover-story/three-cheers-for-beer-a-celebration-of-national-beer-day
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In recent years, Bangor and beer have become synonymous. The region has become a legitimate hotbed for interesting and talented beermakers. The craft beer explosion has been a remarkable thing to watch as more and more passionate brewers decide to try and bring their sudsy dreams to fruition.

Leaving aside the economic impact – which is undeniably significant – it’s just great to know that there are places all over where you can find and enjoy an exceptional beer. We’re up to our ears in options from breweries large and small. No matter what your taste might be, you’ll be able to find something to suit your particular palate at an area brewery.

And since National Beer Day is coming right up, we thought it might be nice to take a moment and celebrate beer in general and Bangor-area beer in particular.

What’s National Beer Day, you ask?

National Beer Day is what we like to call an “unofficial” holiday. Sure, it isn’t acknowledged on any federal calendar, but that doesn’t make it any less legitimate. Look at some of the other “holidays” that share the same month. April Fools’ Day? Not an official holiday, but who doesn’t love pulling a harmless prank or two? We sure do love it here at The Maine Edge. And what about Earth Day? Again, not official, but who would argue against its importance and/or legitimacy?

So it is with National Beer Day (and New Beer’s Eve, of course). Is it silly? Of course it is. Still, there’s something to be said for a day set aside to celebrate something that so many of us enjoy. Beer is a part of our national consciousness in a way that few other consumables are.

Think about the huge variety of beer you see when you go to the grocery store or visit your local watering hole. Think about the utter ubiquity of beer commercials on our television airwaves. Think about the rapidly-growing contingent of small craft breweries offering their own unique takes on the classic beverage. Think about the multitude of homebrewers making their own beers in their own homes – a throwback to those Prohibition days, only without the fear of reprisal and with the assistance of dedicated outlets such as our own Central Street Farmhouse.

Beer has become an American institution. So why not set aside a day to celebrate? Tip back a tall cold one on April 7, my friends. Heck, if I had my druthers, I’d make it a whole week, because really, is a single day enough? Let’s remember that there was a time, not so long ago, when you couldn’t just stroll into your favorite pub and order a pint. It’s a freedom that we’re privileged to have.

As for why it is April 7…

Prohibition’s End and the First Beer Day

The Prohibition era in the United States began in 1920 when the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was effected, outlawing the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol on a national level. The National Prohibition Act, passed in 1919 and popularly known as the Volstead Act, established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor and the assorted punishments for producing or selling it.

The Volstead Act proved exceedingly difficult to enforce, which led to a wildly popular underground economy, filled with bootleggers, rumrunners and speakeasy clubs. In many ways, Prohibition gave birth to the “organized crime” that remains with us to this day.

Prohibition soon lost what little true support it did have, with events like the Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929 serving as harsh reminders that like it or not, people were going to find ways to drink. Add to that the Great Depression, when people clearly needed something to take their minds off the dismal state of the nation, and Prohibition’s days were clearly numbered.

And so, on March 22, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act. Cullen-Harrison legalized the sale of beers and wines with a sufficiently low alcohol content (3.2 percent or below by weight), effective when?

You guessed it - April 7.

People were once again allowed to legally buy beer. There were lines outside taverns and breweries all over the country as people swarmed for the opportunity to legally buy a beer for the first time in well over a decade. Of course, in December of that same year, the 21st Amendment was ratified, hence repealing the 18th Amendment and effectively bringing the Prohibition era to an end.

Captain Kool is one of those IPAs that reminds me of how IPA used to taste. Forget juicy, the hop flavors in this beer are piney, resinous and floral. You may have your own favorite pairing, but to me, you won’t find a better beer to pair up with a pound of boneless wings - with reserve sauce, or course. Classic and delicious.

Orono Brewing Company – Kölsch

Sometimes you just need a ‘crispy boy’ and when that is the case, you really can’t do much better than this Kölsch-style ale from OBC. It has a lovely rich malt flavor balanced by just enough bitterness to round the whole experience out. This is definitely one of the beers you want to have when you are having more than one!

Marsh Island – PB You, Who?

So there is this style of beer being referred to as “pastry stout” that has come into favor as of late. In that vein, Marsh Island Brewing released their take on the mill stout with peanut butter added, and to be honest it’s really good. Not the kind of beer I would drink every day, but absolutely perfect as a sweet nightcap or something to break up all the hops every now and then.

Black Bear – Gearhead Ale

There aren’t enough good Red Ales anymore and I’m not afraid to say it! Luckily, Black Bear is still producing one of the best out there. You’ll seriously be hard-pressed to find one better anywhere. When I need something that just has that little extra malt note than your average pale ale, Gearhead Ale is what I’m looking for every time!

2 Feet - Barn Burner

What do you call a farmhouse ale with a little kick to it? Barn Burner, of course! This dark saison is taken to the next level with the addition of jalapenos and ghost peppers which add a peppery fruitiness and a noticeable amount of heat. Even if you don’t think you are a fan of spicy beer, give this one a try – it’ll surprise you. It’s a mainstay on the 2 Feet board for a reason – it’s outstanding.

Bangor Beer Company – Killed By Death

I chose this beer for two reasons. One, it is a very good imperial stout, and two, the name is awesome and I will always choose a beer with an awesome name. Maybe choosing a beer simply because it has a cool name isn’t the best idea, but it has almost always served me well. And in the case of Killed By Death, well – it was a perfect strategy. Your mileage may vary.

Sea Dog – Blue Paw

Sometimes, you drink a beer not for how it tastes in the moment, but for the many moments in the past that are attached to that particular beer. For me, that’s why I go back to Blue Paw over and over again. It’s a classic blueberry beer, one reminiscent of Maine and that warrants its beloved status by beer drinkers statewide.

Mason’s – Double Hipster IIPA

Because Mason’s IPA, Hipster Apocalypse is so good, they made a DOUBLE Hipster! The brewers were able to pack this beer with even more of the great flavor found in regular Hipster, so I’d recommend buying two cases at once – doubling down, if you will. This one is a fantastic example of how beers can beget other beers.

Blank Canvas – Roasted Garlic Alt

When you go to Blank Canvas, don’t expect anything ordinary. The beers at Blank Canvas are truly one of a kind, and the Roasted Garlic Alt is a great representation of that very fact. Made in a similar fashion to your average Düsseldorf Altbier, the wrinkle here is, you guessed it, an addition of roasted garlic that actually accentuates some of the malt sweetness in the beer and lends a very interesting depth of flavor. If you are looking for something unique, this is the beer for you!

Friar’s Brewhouse - Whoopie Pie Porter

The Friar’s Brewhouse Taproom in Bucksport is always looking to serve up some of their delicious liquid bread! When you visit the tap room, look for the Whoopie Pie Porter, a robust American porter that has chocolaty and creamy notes evocative of the pastry for which it is named. It tastes great out of a bottle, but even better right from the tap!

Airline – Brown Porter

Is it a brown? Is it a porter? The answer to both questions is yes! This expertly designed English porter is not quite as dark as you’d expect from a modern-day porter, but that’s because this harkens back to a time when the lines between stout, porter and brown ales blurred but the results were rich, full bodied ales with mountains of malt flavor and a mild roasted flavor and a subtle bitterness at the finish. Served on cask is the best way to enjoy this one, like most all of Arline’s beers.

Fogtown – Puckerbrush

There are a lot of good beers coming out of this Ellsworth brewery, but it’s hard to go wrong with the tart deliciousness of a well-crafted sour beer. That’s what this one – it’s got a great mouthfeel and depth of flavor, along with a beautiful color and tang drawn from the blackberries used in its creation. Spring is here, with summer to follow, and this is a great one to drink while sitting in the sun.

207 Beer Company - Fisherman’s Friend Ale

New to the Bangor/Brewer beer scene, 207 Beer Company’s got some wonderful things on tap. However, if you ask me, their Fisherman’s Friend Cream Ale is the best beer to start with, in my humble opinion. Crisp, clean and light, it’s a great beer to take out on the boat or to sip on as you tell fishing stories around the bar.

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What about Maine Beer Day?

(A version of the following appeared in the April 4, 2018 edition of The Maine Edge as an entry in Tim Bissell’s Three Pint Stance column. We thought it was an idea that warranted repeating, particularly as we celebrate National Beer Day.)

As someone who fully embraces all that beer has to offer, I say enjoy National Beer Day. It is a celebration of both one of the best beverages the world has ever come to know and of the power of the people to shrug off burdensome governmental regulations. Two great tastes that taste great together. Cheers to all that, obviously.

There’s no question that celebrating the repeal of prohibition is great, but I wonder if a more localized beer holiday might be in order.

In short, National Beer Day is cool, but let’s talk about Maine Beer Day.

You see, beer was legal to produce in the States again after the Cullen-Harrison act came into effect, but the industry was so crippled from the decade-long prohibition of alcohol that it would take even more decades before some regions of the country saw a return to beer production.

Take Maine for example. It wasn’t until 1983, when D.L. and Karen Geary incorporated the D.L. Geary Brewing Company in Portland, that there was even a suggestion that beer production could return to New England. That’s over 50 years without any beer being made in all of New England! Half a century without any new local brews. All told, it wasn’t until December 10, 1986 that D.L. and Karen were ready to release their first pints of Geary’s Pale Ale … and aren’t we all glad they did?

It is in honor of that auspiciously sudsy occasion that I propose December 10 be recognized as Maine Beer Day; it’s the choice that highlights the intrepid entrepreneurial spirit that D.L and Karen exhibited when taking the leap to bring beer back to Maine in 1986. Without that move, who knows where the Maine beer scene would be today?

And there you have it. December 10: Maine Beer Day.

Look, I’ll be honest - I don’t know who controls the particular levers of government that could make this happen. I wouldn’t even know where to start. But you, dear reader? You might. If you are or know one of the powers that be that could make this happen, shoot me a text! After all, American beer gets a day, so why not give the best beer in America – Maine beer – a day of its own?

Recently, I had the pleasure to pour for Gneiss Brewing Company at the 2019 Extreme Beer Festival in Boston. This is the fourth time Gneiss has attended the festival and it just gets more fun every year.

This year brought an interesting wrinkle to the festivities, as the organizers, BeerAdvocate, asked brewers to bring “Extreme Session Beers” – beers that are at or below five percent alcohol but also utilize ingredients or techniques that make them extreme!

There were all sorts of wonderful low-alcohol beers packed with flavor, a favorite of mine being the Key Lime Gose from Weldworks Brewing.

At Gneiss, we brewed up a beer inspired by Mexican sipping chocolate and cheeseball Star Wars jokes called “Hot Rebellion,” an Anti-Imperial Stout made with cocoa nibs, cinnamon and habanero peppers. Clocking at 2.5 percent, it had a ton of flavor but wouldn’t get you so drunk that you can’t pilot your X-Wing home.

(Editor’s note: I’m disappointed that you didn’t use blue milk in the process. That being said, I’m proud of your commitment to safety and responsibility. Friends don’t let friends fly drunk.)

New to EBF this year was the VIP ticket, which got attendees in 30 minutes early as well as access to the VIP lounge where they were serving some special beers and free pickles! I think every brew fest needs to have pickles from here on out, but that’s just me. I’ve seen some festivals where the VIP ticket doesn’t really get you much, but BeerAdvocate really seemed to make it worth the upcharge.

All in all, it was another fantastic weekend celebrating the quirky weird things that seem to unite us all in the Brewing community. Sure, we all love a classically crafted pilsner, but sometimes it’s fun to try a beer made with hot dog water too. I mean, it wasn’t good, but that’s not the point!

Today’s craft beer marketplace is very much a “What have you done for me lately?” type of market, where the new shiny object seems to get all the attention until some other new shiny object comes along and replaces it. This month’s must-have hazy IPA is next month’s shelf turd as a newer, even more dry-hopped beer takes its place in the craft beer zeitgeist, as it were.

This cycle of always needing something new and interesting for consumers has created what is known in the industry as “SKUmageddon.” Basically, there are so many breweries making so many beers that retailers and consumers alike simply cannot keep up. Where a brewery used to be able to count on a certain percentage of their sales coming from their flagship offerings, the trend toward one-offs, collars and otherwise rotating selections has thrown that formula for a loop.

That is where Flagship February comes into play. What is Flagship February, you ask? It is an industry-wide effort to get people to remember their roots and go back and drink the flagships for a change of pace.

Been a while since you have had some Allagash White? Grab a 4-pack! See that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on draft, the very same one you always look past as you peruse the draft list, well stop looking and start ordering! So many great, consistent and trail-blazing beers are out there, silently watching the industry pass them by.

Let’s take a month (even if it is the shortest one) and celebrate these oft-forgotten beauties! This February, you should try to knock at least five beers off this list (or your own personal equivalent):

Allagash White

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA

Shipyard Export Ale

Geary’s Pale Ale

Baxter Stowaway

Samuel Adams Boston Lager

Harpoon IPA

Smuttynose Finest Kind IPA

Geaghan’s Smiling Irish Bastard

Gritty’s Pub Style Ale

Bell’s Two Hearted

Founders All Day IPA

Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale

Stone IPA

Lagunitas IPA

Guinness (in the interest of getting a dark beer on the list)

So, go forth and rediscover some old favorites this February. All those shiny new distractions will still be waiting for you in March, so take the time and remember a few of the beers that helped you fall in love in the first place!

With the recent drop in temps as of late, I figured it would be a good time to talk about what has become a bit of an occupational hazard for me and something that maybe a few of you have experienced before: frozen beer.

Being an alcoholic beverage, beer has a bit of an advantage over most beverages in that the alcohol keeps the liquid from freezing at 32 degrees F (0C for you Canadians, eh). Knowing this, I usually keep some beers for sales samples in my car this time of year, knowing the temp can get into the 20s and even into the upper teens and I don’t have to worry about anything freezing.

You may have used a snowbank outside of the house as a makeshift beer cooler before, or even left beer out on a porch and noticed that even though it’s brisk outside, the beer doesn’t freeze, just gets extra cold. Again, that’s the alcohol at work lowering the freezing temp, allowing you to use nature’s cold to make your beer cold. It’s a beautiful thing!

There is a dark side to this low-cost refrigeration solution, however. Even with the alcohol working its magic, there is only so much cold a beer can stand before it gives in to the fact that it is still 90-95 percent water and freezes up on you. It has happened to the best of us; no need to feel ashamed.

So your beer is frozen. What can be done? Well, if you are lucky and the container (can or bottle) hasn’t ruptured, you very well could save the beer inside. If you move the frozen beer to the fridge and give it a couple days, it should thaw out and the CO2 should go back into solution, returning the beer to its fizzy liquid state. If the bottle or can ruptures, you are pretty much out of luck as there is no way the beer will thaw out and remain carbonated, so you can either discard or enjoy your beer slushie!

Some styles of beer are actually frozen on purposes, as a way to make the resulting beer thicker and higher in alcohol. This style of beer is called Eisbock and it is traditionally frozen at the end of the brewing process, with the frozen portion being discarded and the “freeze distilled” Eisbock being bottled up and served as a high alcohol winter treat. Eisbocks can be upwards of 14 percent alcohol, so it’s definitely the kind of beer to have when you are only planning on having one!

So remember, feel free to take advantage of winters ability to chill your brew, but if the temps gets down into the teens, you might want to go rescue it from the elements and get it into the fridge!

During my weekly appearance on “Downtown with Rich Kimball” last Thursday, I was reminded by the namesake host himself that not everybody eats, sleeps and breathes beer every day of their lives like I do. Specifically, when I casually mentioned that choosing an East Coast IPA over a West Coast IPA has more to do with flavor preference than hometown pride.

That led me to think it might be a good use of newsprint this week to go over the major differences between East and West Coast IPAs and how the IPA style has changed over time.

I guess I’ll start by saying that there was indeed a time where you would only find West Coast style IPAs from breweries out west and only find East Coast or New England Style IPAs from breweries on our side of the Mississippi.

These days, it is not so helpful to think of these terms as place locators; instead, think of them as categories that describe a certain type of flavor profile. There are breweries in California, Oregon and Washington that are making very tasty New England IPAs and breweries down the street bringing out excellent West Coast style flavors from their IPAs, so it really is more about how you make the beer than where you make the beer.

Right. Let’s get into the major differences between the two. To do that properly, we should probably first quickly cover how they are similar. Most IPAs, east or west, range from pale golden to deep orange in color and feature hops as the primary flavor. Most are in the five-to-seven percent alcohol range and are best served carbonated and cold. While they both share hops as a major player in terms of the overall flavor profile, it is how the hops are used and introduced to the beer that determines how those hops will taste.

In a West Coast IPA, you will find hops used throughout the boil, added at different intervals to bring out different bettering characteristics form the hop. West Coast IPAs tend to have much higher IBU (International Bittering Units) rating due to this boiling of hops. Boiling hops brings out bitterness, so West Coast IPAs tend to have more bitter, piney flavor than their East Coast brethren. West Coast IPAs are usually dry-hopped (hops added after fermentation, when the beer is cold), but this is done mainly to balance out the boiled hop bitterness with a touch of aroma and flavor from the unboiled hops.

In an East Coast IPA, there are relatively few hops added to the boil, really just enough to stabilize the beer and impart some preservative qualities and a very small amount of bitterness to balance the malt flavor out. Hops really don’t play a big part in the production of an East Coast IPA until the boil is over. In fact, there are some brewers who don’t make their first big hop addition until the beer is in ‘high-krausen,’ which is a fancy way to say actively fermenting. This begins a process called biotransformation in which the actively working yeast transforms some of the subtle hop flavors into amazingly bright flavors of orange, melon and grapefruit. Additional hops are added in the dry-hop phase, when the beer is done fermenting and cooled, bit these additions are usually quite substantial as well. The resulting beer is very light in bitterness, and has a soft, almost juicy palate. Many New England IPAs look (and sometimes taste) like orange juice to the untrained eye.

Speaking of appearance, the easiest way to tell an East Coast IPA from a West Coast is just by looking at it. West Coast IPAs tend to be bright, clear and somewhat darker in color. East Coast IPAs are usually more a pale golden in color and are very clearly unfiltered; to borrow a phrase from the youth of today, they are “Hazy AF.” This hazy appearance has become an important aesthetic part of the East Coast IPA phenomenon, with some brewers making haze puns for the beer name.

So, to wrap this up, IPA no longer just means “a beer with more than the usual dose of hops.” There are so many variations to the IPA style that simply saying “I don’t like IPAs” doesn’t cut it anymore. Maybe you don’t like pine-y bitterness, but do you like oranges and stone fruits? The flavor possibilities are vast and ever-changing; my advice to you is to get out there and try as many as you can!

A new year is once again looming, and much like many other lazy, phone-it-in columnists around the globe, I am opting to write about some arbitrary New Year’s resolutions that neither you nor I will follow.

The new year will be filled with endless possibilities, yet-to-be-discovered adventures and most importantly, NEW BEERS! Here is a list of beer-related resolutions for your 2019. Instead of setting unattainable goals and drowning in the inevitable impossibility of lofty personal ambitions, try these easy-to-follow New Beers Resolutions for a quick buzz and a shot of dry-hopped self-esteem!

Visit one new (to you) brewery per month. With something like 100 breweries in the State of Maine now, and a new one popping up in a town near you soon (seriously, you probably live closer to a brewery than you realize), you really owe it to yourself, intrepid beer-drinker, to go to the source and try as much of this bounty as possible. I understand life gets busy, but with a little planning and foresight, this is completely doable. And to simplify things a bit, let’s just clean the slate for 2019 and say that as of now, you haven’t visited any breweries. This why your local haunts can still count in a pinch. See, I made it even easier for you!

Your comfort zone is killing your taste buds. Sounds harsh, but I’m just saying. This year, make a concerted effort to drink beer from outside of your comfort zone. Hate beers with spices in them? Buy six different ones and really think about what you like/dislike about them. Hate wheat beer? Order it the next time you go out. The point of this is that you never know what you will enjoy until you try it. Beyond that, your taste buds mature and change over the years. With the amazing variety of local beer available today, you would really be doing yourself a disservice by just drinking the same old thing over and over again.

Buy a beer for a stranger. Simple enough, but seriously - do it! I’ll leave the soapbox wherever soapboxes get stored, but seriously: We need to be a bit more kind in this world and that kindness can take many forms. If you are at a bar and you see someone who needs a lift, or someone who is already filled with and spreading kindness, order them up a pint or offer to grab their next round. The thing I love about kindness is that it’s one of the few positive forces in the world that can go viral. It’s usually the bad, annoying and deleterious things that catch on in society, but when people are selfless and good to their fellow humans, people notice. Small acts make big impressions, so go buy someone a beer!

Cook with beer. This might just be a ploy for me to get you to buy more beer (fine, that’s pretty much what it is), but it is also just good advice. Beer doesn’t make every dish better, but it can really make certain things come to life. A few of my favorites:

Beer Chili - Use instead of stock or water. Hoppy beers work well, but other sorts add depth as well.

Beef/Lamb Stew - Use a stout in place of water. This is magic, I don’t know how it makes stew so much better, but it does. Never make stew without stout.

Beer Batter - When frying foods, batter made with beer has a great deep flavor and can help promote browning. Stay with light/golden ales with maltier profiles.

Beer Ice Cream - I don’t know how to make this, but they had and/or have it on the menu at the fiddlehead and it’s silly how good it is. If you have an ice cream maker and a little daring, experiment with this and let me know how it goes!

Drink no fewer than 2019 ounces of beer this year. That is just over 126 pints, you can do it. Heck, by the time you read this, you are probably already well on your way.

There you have it, a list of things you can do or do not. Just remember that there is no try. Go out there and 2019 like you’ve never 2019-ed before!

Usually, at some point around the holiday season, I will put together a list of things that would be cool to get for the beer lover in your life. This year, I am going to do that, but only sort of. Here’s the deal, a beer lover usually only wants one thing. Beer. So instead of just wrapping up another pick-six from the local bottle shop, do the right thing and get that hop head on a brewery tour bus!

Visiting breweries is always fun, especially if it is a brewery you haven’t been to before. And like drinking a beer, visiting one brewery is usually best followed by visiting another! The only real issue I’ve ever had with doing some brewery hopping is the fact that drinking beers and driving cars make for a TERRIBLE pairing. With this in mind, I am apt to just visit the breweries that are a stone’s throw from me and very infrequently will visit more than one in a single day.

A sad situation for sure … but not a hopeless one.

This is where the brewery tour bus comes in! With a ride on either the Bangor-area’s “The Growler Bus” or the Portland-area’s “Maine Brew Bus”, you can visit multiple breweries (and sometimes meaderies and cider makers, because variety is the spice of life!) in a single day and the only thing you have to worry about is getting back on the bus in time to head to the next stop!

Now, just so we are clear, a ticket for the brewery bus doesn’t give you full license to go hog wild and drink to excess.

(Actually, while we’re on the subject, nothing really EVER gives you free license to do that. You shouldn’t go hog wild and drink to excess, pretty much ever. Back to my point.).

So yeah - don’t get loaded on the brewery bus, but DO drink some beer, make some new friends, and learn a lot about local breweries and the beers they make.

So, if you are the sort of gift-giver that is looking to give an experience as a gift, I can think of few better options than a gift certificate or a couple of tickets for a ride on The Growler Bus or the Maine Brew Bus. Both companies are professionally run by teams with years of experience in the industry and the tours they offer will open you up to a wide variety of flavors and styles that you may not have known were available all around the state!

Over the weekend, I was at Stompers in Holden pouring some Gneiss beers for an in-store tasting as part of their extremely well-attended 1 Year Anniversary (And a very happy anniversary to them indeed!).

While pouring beers, I happened to meet a homebrewer and casual reader of this column who told me that his favorite column were the ones where I discuss home brewing and do my best to impart some of the collected wisdom that has lodged itself in my brain over the past decade or so of making my own hooch.

With that in mind, I figured I would touch upon the topic of home brewing this week, specifically dealing with what I found was the most appreciated and game-changing piece of brewing equipment in my homebrew setup: the Wort Chiller.

What is a wort chiller and why is it such a game changer? Here’s the quick and dirty. When you make beer, no matter if it’s all grain, partial grain or a full-on extract brew, you have to boil the wort (what we brewers call the beer before it is fermented). Once you boil the wort, you have to cool it down to 80 degrees or less in order to be able to add your yeast without harming them with high temperatures. Most brewers find this to be the longest part of the brew day, simply waiting for the wort to cool down.

You might think that just killing the heat and waiting would suffice, but cooling five gallons of just boiled sugar water can take a lot longer than you’d expect; that lag time can be most dangerous for your beer-in-progress. As your wort sits in-between the temperatures of 90 and 140 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course), it is at its most exposed to picking up a foreign yeast or bacteria that can infect the batch and product a foul-tasting beer (alternatively, it could create a delicious sour beer, but unplanned spontaneous inoculations shouldn’t ever be your goal). The best approach is to get your liquid from just boiled to “pitchable” - suitable for yeast to be added - temp as soon as possible.

This is where the wort chiller comes in to play! There are two main types of wort chillers: the immersion chiller - a copper coil with a water inlet and water outlet that you immerse into the hot wort and then run cold water through the copper pipe, allowing for the cold water to cool the liquid without ever coming into contact with it; and the plate chiller - a small box that has a water inlet and water outlet as well as a beer inlet and beer outlet, which pulls in both liquids and passes them over metal plates, with beer on one side and cold water on the other, allowing for an even faster thermal conversion between the beer and water, again without the beer actually coming in contact with the water. Both are very effective at what they do, but the plate chiller is a bit more expensive and requires the use of a pump to move the beer through it, so my recommendation for the casual to moderately serious homebrewer is the immersion chiller.

Immersion chillers can usually get your beer from 200-plus degrees down to a pitchable temp in about 20 minutes - much faster than simply waiting for it to cool at ambient temps or even parking the kettle in a snow bank for a while (I’ve tried it and trust me - it doesn’t work as fast as you want). At the cost of around $80 (at Central Street Farmhouse, shop local this holiday season!), there are few pieces of equipment that you can add to your homebrewing arsenal that will make as big an impact to your process without breaking the bank.

Long story short - chill out, home brewers! Just make sure you have the right equipment with which to do it and you’re on your way.

So a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a new style of beer that is popping at craft breweries all over the country, the ‘Milkshake IPA.’ An offshoot of New England IPA, Milkshake IPAs usually feature an addition of Lactose, or milk sugar, which is unfermentable and provides body and sweetness to the final beer. In addition to the lactose, many brewers add some vanilla beans and pureed fruit to up the flavor quotient and bring a sweet, fruity flavor forward.

In writing about this beer style, I did something that I should never ever do: I assumed that I would enjoy this style of beer before I ever got a chance to try one.

In my effort to seem ‘cool’ and ‘with it,’ I wrote an article about a hot new beer style before ever taking a sip. I shouldn’t have done that, because after trying four different Milkshake IPAs, I can now say without reservation … that they are just not for me. Without naming any names, all four I tried landed firmly in the “thanks, but no thanks” column for me.

This is not to say that any one of these beers was poorly made or had any specific flaw. Really, this is more a judgement of my personal tastes than anything to do with the beers I tried. Sometimes, a flavor set just doesn’t jive with your palate and that is absolutely fine.

I often encounter people who try and try to like a certain beer style, and time after time they simply can’t get past something in the flavor. Maybe this person can’t stand the bitterness of hops or the smokiness of roasted malt or the banana notes from a hefeweizen; certain flavors are just non-starters for certain people. Not only is that perfectly OK, you can also learn a lot from identifying your particular set of no-go beer styles.

I tend to enjoy beers that are highly attenuated or dry, beers that finish clean with a touch of bitterness. This puts things like Kolsch, pilsner, altbier and even West Coast IPA high on my personal enjoyment list. Your list may be completely different, and that’s totally fine. Because it is your list and only your list. Know it, understand it and most importantly learn when to ignore it and when to obey it.

Whatever you do, don’t write about beers before you drink them. That is never a good idea. Lesson learned!

Oh, and if you still haven’t tried a Milkshake IPA, Orono Brewing Company and Mast Landing have a Blueberry Milkshake IPA called ‘Go Blue’ that just came out for Homecoming weekend at UMaine. Go try it if there is any left!